Fall 2012
Volume: 11 | Number: 4
Mind Which Gap?
Since the early nineteenth century, social reformers have been concerned with how different groups fare in school. In the early … Read More
Anti-Social Debts
The current student debt burden is an unsustainable outcome of the government's abdication of responsibility to secure access to higher education. Andrew Ross analyses the factors behind the funding crisis and suggests some ways to reestablish an affordable education system. Read More
The Not-So-Pink Ivory Tower
Sociologist Ann Mullen explores what it means that women now earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees. Rather than seeing this as a sign of a “male crisis” in higher education, this article concludes that the gender integration of higher education is far from complete. Read More
Teaching to Distraction
The classroom is a social space, and how students experience and perceive that space shapes how they approach their classrooms and what they do in them. Margaret Austin Smith uses ethnographic data of college students' classroom experiences to demonstrate the degree of importance understanding students' ways of knowing the classroom has on the effectiveness of teaching and learning relationships. Read More
Revising Peer Review
Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues that as online platforms for scholarly publishing foster increasingly fluid means of communication amongst researchers, the principles on which such publishing is founded—including, most crucially, peer review—must become more flexible. Read More
Degree by Default
In past generations, college was thought to be a site for higher learning in America. Yet April Yee's ethnographic research finds that few undergraduates are enrolling for the pursuit of knowledge anymore; instead, students are going to college simply because they believe they must have a degree to have a future in our society. Read More
American Sentimentalism and the Production of Global Citizens
"American Sentimentalism and the Production of Global Citizens" looks at recent trends in the globalization of U.S. higher education through the lens of sentimentalism to expose three dangers: the linking of a certain kind of productivity with global citizenship; the division of the world into global citizens and global subjects; and the illusion that awareness and enthusiasm are sufficient for social change. Social scientist Ron Krabill calls for international education policies that embrace radical reciprocity to overcome these dangers. Read More
Keeping Rank
Sociologist Dana M. Britton examines barriers to advancement in the academy, focusing on long-term associate professors. In particular, she draws attention to the role of "institutional reproduction"—teaching, advising, and service—as a barrier to advancement. Read More
College Sports’ Corporate Arena
Sociologist D. Randall Smith argues that a segment of big-time college sports has embraced the corporate model and this has led to a steady increase in the revenue gap between the "haves" and "have nots." Read More
The Chattering Class
Sociologist Michael Schudson reviews Ronald Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley’s The Space of Opinion. He argues that this full-length study of opinion journalism in the United States makes a strong case that the mix of diverse opinions, formats, and personalities in our era of op-ed pages, talk radio, and cable TV helps engage citizens with politics and improves democratic deliberation. Read More
